Pa. court: College can be told of juvenile record

ASSOCIATED PRESS

September 20, 2012 12:01 AM

ASSOCIATED PRESS

September 20, 2012 12:01 AM

PHILADELPHIA -- In a case that poses questions about whether a juvenile record should follow a student to college, a Pennsylvania appeals court ruled that it was OK for a university to be told that an incoming freshman had disseminated child pornography.

Now, the teen's attorney is asking the Superior Court to reconsider, saying its decision misinterprets state law.

At issue is the state's Juvenile Act, which says schools shall be notified if a child is found delinquent in juvenile court.

The 2-1 decision, which upheld a ruling by a Lehigh County juvenile court, said such notification can extend to colleges and universities.

The attorney, Gavin Holihan, said, "the Juvenile Act has never been construed in this way before."

"Nobody has read it to pertain to colleges and universities," he said.

On Wednesday, he filed a motion asking the court to allow the case to be reargued before a larger panel of judges.

When he was 17, Holihan's client had downloaded an image and put it in a folder that made it available on a file-sharing network. The unidentified teen was found delinquent -- the juvenile court equivalent of guilty -- in 2011 on one count of dissemination of child pornography.

He was 18 and intending to go to Temple University in Philadelphia by the time he was found delinquent, said Holihan, who declined to identify the teen or say if he was enrolled at the school.

The Superior Court said it would be counterintuitive to conclude that the Legislature "only wished to protect students in primary or secondary schools from those juveniles who had been adjudicated delinquent but not those attending institutions of higher education."

The judges also questioned the logic of concluding that a child who is adjudicated delinquent "presents a danger to elementary, middle, and high school students, but ceases to present a danger once the delinquent child enrolls in college."

Temple spokesman Ray Betzner said he could not comment on the student's case.